


Common People

by shinyfire



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Pre-Slash, Pulp, common people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-22
Updated: 2014-09-22
Packaged: 2018-02-18 09:33:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2343653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinyfire/pseuds/shinyfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inspired by Pulp's song/hymn/anthem/lament/rallying-cry of the same name.  This just came out, all of a sudden.  John finds himself wondering if Sherlock would like to sleep with common people, like him.  Basically. While making breakfast.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Common People

John stood absently waiting for the toaster to finish. On the radio _Common People_ had begun playing, its over-excited opening beats tinny in the cold kitchen. He shut his eyes with tiredness and leant against the worktop, wishing he was still in bed and not having to face the commute and the grey London smell. When was the last time he’d heard this song, properly sung along? It was that night in the hospital's social club, back in the days when you could still smoke indoors, the Friday night crowd, the hard drinkers, the desperate, the emotionally knackered, everyone from the porters and cleaners to the junior doctors and the not so junior doctors. He had felt himself amongst the desperate at that point. A junior doctor at the time, a three month stint on a psycho-geriatric ward. Sad old ladies and the constant smell of shit and piss no matter how hard they’d tried to keep them clean. He’d hated himself for hating it there, for feeling his chest constrict every time his shift started.

There had been a fevered atmosphere that night, hot, the drinking more frantic, the humour darker and the laughter more bitter than usual. This song had come on and suddenly the sad little dance floor in front of the bleach-headed youth with his record collection had filled. They had jumped rather than danced to it, tribal almost, anything to get away from the day, shouting " _because there’s nothing else to do!_ ‘" with hectic emotion.

He’d found himself up against a small woman, a nurse that he vaguely recognised from the accommodation block. Nice smile, short skirt, DMs, all spilling out of her tight clothes. She’d pressed up to him at the end of the song and he found himself pulling her backwards towards a chair, and she’d sat heavily on his lap leaning in for a snog, all ashtray mouth and smooth skin and heat. And then he’d pushed her up and lead her outside and the night air had slapped them, and invigorated him given him a sudden wild confidence. He opened his eyes briefly as a respite from the memory. And then he remembered, he’d pulled her around the back of the red brick building, near the bushes and kissed her deeply, hands everywhere. The sex had been eager but made frustratingly slow through the drink. She’d wiped herself afterwards with her knickers and stuffed them in her bag.

And he’d made to go, offered to walk her back to the nurses’ home, well, what else could he do?, but she’d thanked him quietly (for the sex? Please, god, no. For saying he'd take her home?) and said she’d go back inside to her friends. He’d walked home alone.

It was that night, he realised, that he’d made the decision to join the army. His mother had been horrified. She’d been so proud to say ‘my son, the doctor’, a proper snob, she was, actually calling their neighbours ‘common’, that he’d wondered if she ever felt able to say to anyone ‘my son, the soldier’.

And strangely, it had all lead here. To an actual fucking flat above a shop, with a bloke who had not only got himself a job but made a name for himself proclaiming to be only person on earth who could possibly do that job; and who had a brother (brother? Dad? who cares) who could, apparently, 'stop it all’ Fucking literally Stop. It. All. The toaster popped. John opened his eyes, a thin smile on his lips, and his thoughts turned to his shaggy haired-flatmate. Had he cut his hair? Did he want to sleep with common people, John thought, common people, _like you?_?


End file.
